Sanctions against Iran: Theory and practice

There’s an interesting report up on the Baker Institute website called “Weighing Benefits and Costs of International Sanctions against Iran.” It’s the work of a group called the Iran Project. While it takes no position on the wisdom of U.S. and international sanctions policy against Iran, it provides a detailed and illuminating look at the complexity of the issue. At a minimum, the report provides a useful test for the reader: if you find it fascinating, as I do, then you have the makings of a foreign policy wonk.

Sanctions — either bilateral, in conjunction with informal coalitions of like-minded countries, or through international organizations like the UN — have long been a staple of U.S. foreign policy. Their appeal is obvious: sanctions provide an intermediate step, between normal negotiations and outright hostilities, in our attempts to a) alter the behavior of foreign states or even b) force the removal of their governments. There is a voluminous and disputatious literature on the effectiveness of sanctions. I will not go into here. Suffice it say that the evidence is mixed.

I will, however, note that recent Gallup polling from Iran demonstrates that sanctions can have limited or even counterproductive effects, at least if their purpose is to turn populations against their government’s policies. In the wake of punitive international economic sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to curtail its current nuclear program, 63 percent of Iranians continue to support that program; 17 percent want their government to suspend it. Forty-seven percent of Iranians believe that the United States is responsible for sanctions; another 23 percent blame Israel, Western Europeans or the UN; only 10 percent blame their own government. It should be noted that the nuclear question specified a power program, not weapons. The Iranian government, of course, denies that it developing the latter; the United States and Western Europeans, among others, believe otherwise.

This polling does not mean that sanctions will fail. The Iranian government may still yield to international pressure for reasons ranging from weariness with strategic isolation to a desire to mitigate economic hardship. But the polling does suggest the idea that sanctions would, by themselves, prompt a sharp and negative domestic reaction to Iran’s nuclear program is wishful thinking. It also suggests that Iranians are not, at least to date, blaming their government.

The latter should be completely unsurprising. Nationalism is as strong among Iranians as it among Americans. And it is easy to imagine a similar “rally round the flag” effect were the United States to face foreign pressure aimed at altering our policies. It is one of the curiosities of our foreign policy that Americans often assume that foreigners will act in ways that we ourselves never would. This is one of the reasons why we are routinely surprised when local populations— or at least significant portions of them — take up arms against us when we invade and occupy their countries.

Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.